We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.
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Jonina (@JoninaTurzi) is cofounder of Lancaster Farm Sanctuary, a volunteer district leader for HSUS, & a doctor of physical therapy & yoga educator.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Sentientism is “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
0:00 Welcome
1:24 Jonina’s Intro
– Lancaster Farm Sanctuary, physical therapy, yoga teaching, sobriety, queerness
2:33 What’s Real?
– Hippie parents, social justice, civil rights
– Catholic father & schooling, more cultural than doctrinal
– Brethren Church family history
– Parents with a spiritual appreciation without buying into religious doctrine
– Feeling the freedom to explore “I just want you to be happy”
– “It felt like a human construct”
– Identifying as an atheist as a teenager
– Finding a beauty in the human body (& a sense of spiritual meaning) through an anatomy class
– Being bullied, as a “young queer kid”, by members of “Youth for Christ”
– “I have no idea what’s real”
– The lower & upper case “Self” in some Yoga practice
– Some things might always be unknowable
– Reverence, wonder & awe… openness
17:10 What (& who) Matters?
– Oneness & interconnectedness
– Unnecessary harm to sentient others
– Might plants have a kind of sentience? “I’m OK with saying we shouldn’t harm plants unnecessarily”
– Seeing the similiarities between human and non-human animals through physiology
– “The idea that non-human animals aren’t sentient is so bizarre to me”
– Movement & intent as indicators of sentience
– Are Roomba’s sentient?
– Evolution, behaviour/comms, information processing as inferential evidence for sentience
– Intrinsic & instrumental value
– The ethical dangers of holistic/ecocentric thinking
– “Spirtual Bypassing”… rushing to find a purpose/meaning/spiritual goal while bypassing compassion & understanding
– Knowing very spiritual people who also own factory farms
– A local factory farm with a Bible verse written on it
– “The foundation of a spiritual practice is caring for others”
– Stages of moral development: Ego, ethno, anthropocentric…
37:30 Vegetarian to vegan
– Rebelling against Jonina’s mother’s vegetarianism as a teenager
– Being vegetarian. Not understanding dairy
– Seeing slaughterhouse footage & going vegan together with Jonina’s partner
– Social indoctrination re: animal ethics & the supernatural
– Climate change
– The relationship between scarcity & morality. Is it harder to be moral under scarcity?
…and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube.
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our “I’m a Sentientist” wall via this simple form.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook.
Thanks for the post-prod Graham.
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